Quincy Market: Chillin’ with Santa

We made the trip down to Boston yesterday for the Ron Paul Rally at Faneuil Hall. It was the worst day of the year weather-wise to be traveling but I’m glad we did it. The photo is us taking a break with Santa upstairs in Quincy Market after the Rally.

Thankfully the old 4Runner still runs well enough to get us to Portland and back. We wouldn’t have gotten very far without 4WD yesterday. We ended up with 18″ of fresh snow on top of the 12″ that was already on the ground. We got on the road to Portland around 6:45 am to catch a 9:30 bus to Boston. It’s 100 miles to Portland and it usually takes 2 hours. We barely made it in time. A number of buses were canceled, thankfully ours wasn’t one of them.

We arrived in South Station about 12:30, about an hour behind schedule. It took us a little while to figure out where we needed to go on the subway to get to Boston Common where the day’s events were supposed to start at 1pm. We arrived about 15 minutes early. There were already 30 or so people there when we arrived standing in the rain with their signs. The event was supposed to take place on the steps of the State House building. These two photos show why that wasn’t happening.

That’s the Granny Warriors bus in the first photo. They drove up from North Carolina. We met a bunch of people from all over the country. There were people from as far away as Georgia, Dallas, TX and Portland, OR.

We hung out in the freezing rain for about an hour as the group swelled from about 30 people to at least 100. Then we marched from the State House to Faneuil Hall. The wind was whipping like crazy. You can get a good idea of what it was like in this CNN Video.

My favorite part of the day was at Faneuil Hall. It’s the whole reason I wanted to make the trip. It’s one of the most historic buildings in the country and I was getting to participate in another (hopefully) historic event inside its walls. I took a bunch of pictures but they’re all mostly boring. We sat upstairs in the balcony and this one gives a good idea of what the place looks like inside. BTW, that’s Rand Paul (Ron Paul’s son) being interviewed by CNN in the bottom left corner of the photo. He was talking on camera for over 5 minutes but they only used a short snippet in the CNN video link above.

We didn’t stick around for all of the speakers. We wanted to hear Rand Paul speak and I’m glad we did. He should really consider running for office. He’s an excellent speaker and appears to have the same value system as his father.

With the weather still miserable and the forecast calling for another six inches of snow overnight at home we figured it would be smart to get back on the road to home. On the way home we decided to take the Amtrak Downeaster train from North Station to Portland. I’m convinced that this train is the best way to travel to/from Boston. It’s very comfy with lots of leg room. The chairs lean way back and I got some quality shut-eye. (I was sleeping soundly enough to snore loudly.) The Downeaster takes a little longer than the bus but it’s a much better trip in my opinion.

We finally made it home at 11:15 pm. It was a long day but well worth the trip.